Guneet Singh quits Microsoft to become co-founder of Dealsandyou.com

Singh has partnered with Harish Bahl and Tarun Sobhani to start the group buying site

Guneet Singh, lead, integrated marketing and communications, consumer and online, Microsoft India has quit the company to become an entrepreneur. July 16 was his last day at Microsoft.

Singh has partnered with Harish Bahl, founder and chief executive officer, Smile Interactive Technologies Group and Tarun Sobhani, erstwhile director and ad sales head, AOL (India) to become director and co-founder of Dealsandyou.com. Bahl and Sobhani are the other co-founders of the group buying site.

For the uninitiated, Deals and You is an e-commerce or group buying site. Every day, it presents a huge 'discount deal of the day' of up to 80 per cent on lifestyle related services such as restaurants and hotel accommodations. The site works on the concept of 'hyper-local' and 'collective bargaining'. It usually presents deals to its members in their nearby areas. Thus, different deals are offered to members based on their locations, from where they log on to the site.

The discount deals on services are usually opened for certain durations (24-60 hours). To avail a discount, a member has to first show his interest in the deal of the day. However, whether he will get the discount deal or not is a function of the number of members who will show their interest in the deal. The deal can be availed by members who show their interest only when a specified number of members (critical mass) apply or show interest in that deal.

Confirming his move to afaqs!, Singh says he will be responsible for management of internal operations of the portal, apart from the marketing function, while Sobhani's role will be to form alliances with deal providers.

Singh is a business graduate from Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies (CBS) and an MBA from SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (Mumbai). He has about 13 years of experience. He started his career with Samsung, where he was responsible for product marketing of consumer durables. Later, he moved to ABN AMRO Bank as business head, personal loans. In 2005, he joined Microsoft (India), where he was responsible for marketing of Windows, Hotmail and Bing brands in India.

For the record, Dealsandyou.com has recently acquired a similar start-up named Wanamo.com. As a result, Sampad Swain and Abhishek Shah, founders of Wanamo.com, have joined Dealsandyou.com as co-founders.